


Pancho and Lefty

by brihana25



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Blood, Brotherhood, Drama, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, Mild Language, Season/Series 02, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:03:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brihana25/pseuds/brihana25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A "routine" vampire hunt sends Sam and Dean on a trip they'll never forget - to a place where people park their horses in the street, a time when guns are worn outside your clothes, and a town where the vampires look just like the cowboys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Written as an spn_summergen gift for zuben_eschamali using her prompts:
> 
> Castiel transports Dean and Sam back to the Old West, because if they can change something about the way Samuel Colt made his gun, they can use it to kill Lucifer.
> 
> and
> 
> "Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?"
> 
> I did play around with the prompts a bit, and didn't write the first one exactly as she put it forth, but I'm satisfied with how it ended up, and she really seemed to like it, so I think it all works out okay in the end.
> 
> Never-ending love and gratitude to whisper99, my partner in crime and most excellent alpha-bet, for encouraging me, yelling at me, telling me when I'm being stupid, and yes, even for pointing out when I've left out half of the story. Eternal thanks to switch842 for saving my life (okay, maybe just my sanity) at the 11th hour and delivering a thorough beta on the tightest schedule ever. And for being damn good at it.

_"Nothing to worry about, Sam. Just a vamp hunt. Small nest, five at most."_  
  
He hated vampire hunts, hated everything about them. He hated the sneaking around and the having to be quiet and the fact that it had to be done while the sun was still up. He hated the blood and the mess and the way their heads rolled when they hit the floor. He had always hated vampire hunts and – at the rate they were going – always would.  
  
 _"I've been reconning that warehouse all night. We go in, clean 'em out, be home in time for supper."_  
  
Warehouses were terrible places to hunt – too many wide-open spaces you couldn't defend combined with too many shadows for the monsters to hide in. The building they were in wasn't so much a warehouse as it was just a big empty building with loading docks on the side, one that might have been a factory at one time, or maybe a trucking company, but it didn't make much difference. They'd had one-too-many close calls in one-too-many buildings exactly like it.   
  
_"It's a simple job, I'm tellin' ya. One of the easiest we've had in months."_  
  
There was no such thing as "simple" or "easy" in their line of work. Even the simplest job could get complicated, and even the easiest hunt could turn deadly. To top it off, they were Winchesters, which meant they were damn near cursed from the start. They could never do anything the simple and easy way if there was a way to make it harder.  
  
The hunt they were on had proven no different.  
  
They were in a warehouse on the east side of Laramie, Wyoming, cleaning out a vampire nest led by a man who had once been named Josiah Edwards. The research Sam had done on him while Dean had been watching the warehouse was sketchy, at best. There was a census record on him from 1880, but there was no date of birth and he never showed up in the census again, despite there being no record of his death, either. They had no idea where he or the rest of his nest had actually come from.  
  
They did know that that nest had at least twice as many members as Dean had originally thought.  
  
"Easy?!" Sam shouted across the room. "You call this easy!?"   
  
He looked up from the headless corpse of the vampire at his feet, the third he'd killed so far, and swiped at the blood on his face with the back of his hand.   
  
Dean spun around, using his momentum to swing both of the machetes he held, and took down another. "Hey, it's not my fault they woke up!" he said.  
  
Sam rolled his eyes as he stepped back. The vampire that was charging him didn't anticipate his sudden movement, and when it tried to change direction, it fell to the floor. Sam swung his machete down on its neck without hesitation. "It is your fault...," he said between swings. "That you can't fuckin'... count!"  
  
The head he'd just severed didn't roll far enough, so Sam nudged it with his toe to knock it out of his way. He knew from experience that stepping on or tripping over a disembodied head was never fun.  
  
God, he hated vampire hunts.  
  
"I got as far as five!" Dean called back. "Anything more than that isn't worth worrying about." He spun and swung his machetes again, and another vampire's head fell to the floor. Dean stopped to watch its body follow it down, and there was no mistaking the grin on his face, even through the blood and gore that covered it.  
  
Sam shook his head, then looked around the suddenly silent warehouse. He glanced across at Dean and saw him inspecting their surroundings in the same way.  
  
"Is that all of them?" he asked.  
  
Dean nodded slowly as he bent down, picked up a discarded rag from the floor and started wiping the blades of his machetes. He kept looking around, constantly on the lookout for anything that might still be lurking in the shadows. "I think so. How many'd you get?"  
  
"Four," Sam said. "You?"  
  
"Six."  
  
"Show off," Sam muttered. He bent down and started cleaning his machete on the shirt of one of the headless bodies on the floor. "We're done, right?"  
  
He could hear Dean's footsteps echoing through the empty building as he walked toward him. "I don't see any more, do you?"  
  
Sam glanced around the room before turning back to Dean. "No, I... Behind you!"  
  
Dean spun at Sam's shout, but he didn't have time to either dodge the vampire that barreled toward him or defend himself against it.  
  
Sam pushed himself up from the floor just as Josiah Edwards slammed into Dean's ribs and dragged him to the ground. Dean's machetes flew out of his hands, and Sam swore he heard Dean's head smack against the concrete. He hit the floor in a heap and lay there, entirely too still. He didn't make a sound when Edwards sank his sharp teeth into the side of his neck.   
  
"No!" Sam cried out.   
  
He ran forward, swinging his machete at the vampire's neck and screaming in rage and fear.  
  
Edwards pulled away from Dean, ducked to the side, and jumped out of Sam's reach. Sam reacted to his movement quickly, pulling his swing at the last second to avoid cutting Dean and spinning to face the vampire. Edwards rolled across the floor and came up to his knees, then growled and flashed his second row of teeth – teeth that were covered in Dean's blood.  
  
Sam picked up one of the fallen machetes, grabbed Dean under the arms and hauled him to his feet. He started dragging Dean back and out of the way while keeping the vampire in front of them.  
  
Dean was too out of it to see, and Sam was too focused on Dean to notice, but there was a wave of some sort in front of them, a ripple forming in the air between them and Edwards. It started small, then exploded out from the center, and threw a sonic blastwave directly at them. Sam felt the change in the room around him, both heard and felt a sudden wind rushing past his ears, and he looked up. His eyes widened and he tightened his grip on Dean as he tried to move them out of the way.  
  
It hit Dean first, with more force than Sam could have anticipated, and knocked him out of Sam’s arms. He fell to the floor face-first, still out cold. Sam jumped and dove toward him, and somehow managed to throw himself across Dean's back before the wave plowed into them both.  
  
He was unconscious before he realized he'd hit the ground.   
  


* * *

  
The first thing Sam saw when he opened his eyes was dirt. He lifted his head slightly and saw a massive expanse of bright blue sky, with just a few high clouds floating across it.  
  
He blinked his eyes to adjust them to the sunlight while shaking his head to clear it. Something had changed, he knew that much, but his head was pounding, and he couldn't quite put his finger on what was wrong. He pushed himself up and off of Dean and looked around slowly, immediately noticing the mountains in the distance.  
  
He blinked again. Wait – mountains and sky? Where'd the warehouse go?  
  
He turned his head as far as it would go, first in one direction and then in the other, mentally comparing what he knew he was supposed to see with what he actually saw. The mountains in the distance looked exactly as they had when he and Dean had walked into the warehouse, but the warehouse itself, and all of the other buildings around it, had completely disappeared.  
  
He pressed his hand against his throbbing head. "What the hell?" he muttered.  
  
He heard a groan from the ground next to him and looked down at his brother.  
  
"Take it easy, Dean" he said. "You're a little banged up."  
  
"God, my head," Dean said with another groan. "What hit me?" He opened his eyes and looked up at Sam. "And why does my neck hurt?"  
  
"Josiah Edwards." Sam answered both questions at once. Dean was starting to leverage himself up from the ground, and Sam put an arm behind his back to help him as he sat up.   
  
Once Dean was steady, he pressed his hand against the bite mark on his neck, winced, and looked down at the blood on his hand. Only after that did he notice their surroundings. "The hell are we?"  
  
Sam shrugged and tried to figure out exactly how to explain what he was starting to suspect had happened. "Near as I can tell? I know it sounds crazy, but I think we're exactly where we were."  
  
Dean lowered his eyebrows and shook his head. "Banged up and bit up, maybe, but not stupid. I know we were in a building."  
  
Sam nodded. "Yeah, we were. But it's not here. It's like it vanished."  
  
"Buildings don't just vanish, Sam," Dean argued.   
  
"Not usually, no," Sam agreed.  
  
"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.'  
  
"We weren't in Kansas in the first place."  
  
"Okay, then," Dean returned. "I don't think we're in Wyoming anymore."  
  
"Oh, we're still in Wyoming," Sam said. He shook his head and pointed at the mountains. "Because those haven't moved." He pressed his hands against the ground and pushed himself to his feet, dusting his hands off on his jeans as he straightened. "And it's not just the warehouse. There were dozens of buildings out here, and they're all gone." He looked into the distance behind Dean. "And there's something about two miles west of here that looks like a town."  
  
Dean looked over his shoulder, and saw what Sam was talking about. The buildings in the distance were so small they were barely visible. "That can't be Laramie."  
  
Sam nodded his head slowly. "I think it is."  
  
Dean turned back around. "That's not even possible, Sam. I mean, somebody or something just dragged us out of the building and dumped us out here, that's all."  
  
"You didn't see it, did you?"  
  
"See what?"  
  
"That... vortex or ripple or... whatever it was, in the warehouse? Of course you didn't see it. You were out cold."  
  
Dean was staring at him strangely, and he knew that, but he ignored it. He had a theory about what had happened, and as crazy as it was going to sound, he knew that he had to say it.  
  
"We're still in Wyoming," he said slowly. "We're still in the exact spot we were when that wave thing hit us. But, I don't think..." He turned in another circle, double-checking the positions of the mountains against their location in his memory, checking off the landmarks he'd noticed on the drive out. "Dean, I don't think we're in 2007 anymore."  
  
"What?" Dean turned back around too quickly and regretted it immediately. He lowered his head and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes. "That's fucking insane."  
  
"Is it?" Sam asked. He knelt down at Dean's side so he could get a closer look at the bite wound. "Really? Dean, we were hunting vampires. We've killed pagan gods. We know how to kill ghosts. I've got demon blood in me, and a week ago an honest-to-God djinn stuck you in an alternate reality." He paused to let it sink in, not continuing again until Dean looked up at him. "Is time travel really that crazy?"  
  
Dean shook his head slightly and sighed. "Not when you put it that way, no."  
  
Sam shrugged as he finished his inspection of the bite marks and turned his attention to Dean's head wound. "I think those'll heal up on their own, but we'll have to find some water soon to wash them out. Does this hurt?" He pressed gently against the small bump he'd found on the back of Dean's skull.  
  
"Ow! Of course it hurts!" He slapped Sam's hand away. "Stop that."  
  
Sam held his hands up in surrender and stood up again.  
  
"So, any theories, professor?" Dean asked. "Because I always thought time travel was kinda like unicorns – a really cool idea that people want to believe in but that doesn't exist."  
  
"You mean like we used to think vampires were extinct?"   
  
It was Dean's turn to shrug.  
  
Sam sighed. "Until just now," he said. "I did, too."  
  
"So what do we do now?"  
  
Sam sighed again and looked off into the horizon. "Well, if that's Laramie... do you think we should head for it?"  
  
Dean nodded. "Yeah. There's probably not another town close enough to walk to, is there?"  
  
"No," Sam said. "Not likely. Buford would be on the other side of the mountains from here."  
  
"Hey, think there's more than two people there?"  
  
Sam smiled. "Actually? Yeah, there probably is."  
  
Dean groaned again as he started to push himself to his feet. Sam stepped forward and grabbed Dean's arm, helping him stand and holding him until he steadied himself.  
  
"That's gotta be a good two or three miles away," he said. "You gonna make it that far?"  
  
"Yeah," Dean said dismissively, shrugging Sam's hand off as he did. "Dude, I can walk."  
  
"Dude, you've got a concussion," Sam shot right back. "And a bunch of holes in your neck."  
  
"I'm fine," Dean insisted. He pulled away, turned too quickly, and his knees buckled. Sam grabbed him around the chest to keep him from hitting the ground.  
  
"Yeah, I can see that."  
  
Dean sighed and turned away again, but much more carefully than he had before. "Okay, yeah, maybe I've got a little headache. So, we take it slow," he said. "It's not like we really have a choice, do we?"  
  
Sam shook his head and fell into step at Dean's side.  
  
"Maybe we'll get lucky in Laramie. Figure out how we got wherever... or whenever, I guess... we actually are. And maybe start figuring out how to get back where we're supposed to be."  
  
"Yeah," Sam muttered. "Because we get lucky so often."  
  
"Well, there's always the other possibility."  
  
"What other possibility?" Sam asked  
  
"That we're having one of those mass hallucination things."  
  
Sam huffed an almost-humored snort. "I don't think mass hallucination would be the right word."  
  
"So a dual hallucination, then," Dean said with a shrug and a smile. "You burned any weird looking plants since we've been here?"  
  


* * *

  
If there had been any doubt left in Sam's mind that they'd somehow been transported back in time, his first view of downtown Laramie would have removed all traces of it.  
  
It felt almost like walking into one of the ghost towns they'd hunted in through the years, or the backlot at some old wild west movie studio. The streets were wide but unpaved, hard-packed dirt rutted by wagon wheels and pitted by horse hooves. There were no power lines or telephone poles, no streetlights, and no traffic signals – only a single road, lined on both sides by one- and two-story buildings made of either wood or brick, that led to the train depot and the town's one hotel. Wide wood planks had been laid between the buildings and the road, giving the town a basic sidewalk system.  
  
"Am I the only one that expects to run into the Earps and the Clantons?" Dean asked.  
  
"Yeah, you are," Sam said with a chuckle. "Because Tombstone's in Arizona."  
  
"Smart ass," Dean muttered under his breath, but Sam saw the smile that he tried to hide.   
  
Dean slowed his pace as they crossed the invisible line that separated the town from the undeveloped plain around it, and Sam did the same. He could see townspeople milling around on the sidewalks, walking into and out of the buildings, going about their business, as they would any normal day. That made sense to Sam, because to anyone who hadn't just woken up from an unexpected trip through time, it was just another day.  
  
The men were dressed much the same as he and Dean, except there were no t-shirts or blue jeans, and most of them wore guns on their belts with the casual air of people who'd been doing it their whole lives. The women he saw wore long skirts or dresses that skimmed along the top of the ground, and they had to lift them up an inch or two when they stepped up onto the sidewalks. All of the children were dressed like miniature versions of the adults, and they ran up and down the sidewalks and across the street, stirring up dirt and dust with every step.  
  
He and Dean were earning more than their fair share of odd, sidelong glances from the people they passed, and Sam realized that they actually did stick out in the crowd. Even though their clothes weren't all that different, Sam was only wearing a light jacket instead of a coat, and Dean's had a bit more blood on them than most people's.  
  
"We need..." His words trailed off when he saw the sign on the front of the general store, and he grabbed Dean's sleeve and pulled him into the street.  
  
"The hell, Sam?" Dean said.  
  
Sam pointed at the store they were walking toward. "We've got to get some new clothes," he answered. "And we've gotta do it now."  
  
Dean caught sight of a gap between the store and the livery stable that stood beside it, and he pushed Sam in that direction. "Slow down there, buckaroo."   
  
Once they were safely in the narrow alleyway, Dean turned to face him. "How do you expect us to pay for clothes?" he said. "We can't exactly use the money we've got in our pockets, can we?"  
  
Sam shook his head. "No. They wouldn't recognize it as being money at all." He brightened when a thought occurred to him. "We can trade for it. What have we got with us that might be worth something?"  
  
Dean took quick stock of the few things that had made the trip through time with them. "My Colt, two machetes. You got your Taurus?"  
  
Sam nodded.  
  
Dean shrugged and shook his head. "Then I don't know what we can do, Sam. Because the guns stay with us, and I don't think anyone's gonna pay for a couple old machetes."  
  
Sam pressed his lips together, almost unwilling to broach the subject but knowing they really had no choice. "What about your knife?"  
  
Dean narrowed his eyes at him. "What knife?"  
  
"The one you have in your boot," he said, gesturing at Dean's leg. Dean was already shaking his head, but Sam kept going. "The silver one. You know the one I'm talking about."  
  
"No," Dean answered simply.  
  
"Dean, we have to."  
  
"No way."   
  
Sam just stared at him, keeping his expression serious and making it clear he wasn't taking 'no' for an answer.  
  
"No," Dean said anyway, his voice on the verge of of a whine. "Do you know how hard it was to find that knife? It's an antique, damn it. Silver blade. It's worth..."  
  
"A lot of money," Sam interrupted. "Enough to get us some clothes, maybe even some food and a place to sleep."  
  
Dean kept shaking his head. "No. I'll play some poker. There's gotta be a saloon around here somewhere."  
  
"You get caught hustling, they'll shoot you." Sam held his hand out. "Give me the knife."  
  
"Damn it, Sam." Dean had gone past 'on the verge' and was full-out whining. "It's mine."  
  
"It'll buy us enough time to figure out what the hell is going on. Now give it to me."  
  
Dean sighed loudly, but he crouched down and pulled up the leg of his jeans. He removed the knife from its sheath slowly, then turned it over in his hand and stared at it almost lovingly.  
  
"Who's to say this isn't how you got it in the first place?" Sam asked.  
  
"What?"  
  
"You know, that whole 'time is a circle' thing? Maybe you giving the knife to the storekeeper is how the guy you got it from got it in the first place."  
  
Dean's eyes narrowed as he stood, and he shook his head again. He looked at the knife once more, then turned it around and slapped the handle into Sam's palm.  
  
"Better be worth it," he muttered. "Because that's the only silver we've got. If we run into a shapeshifter, we're screwed."  
  


* * *

  
"You boys ain't from around here, are ya?"  
  
"You have no idea," Dean muttered.  
  
"No, sir," Sam said at the same time. "We're not. We're from Kansas."  
  
The storekeeper, a man who'd introduced himself as James Edwards, didn't look like he believed them, but at the same time, he didn't look like he really cared. He turned back to the shelves behind him and pulled down a few more boxes. "What brings ya to Laramie, then?"  
  
Sam glanced over at Dean, who was wandering around the small walkways of the store aimlessly.   
  
The late afternoon sun shone through the front windows despite the layer of dirt that stuck to the glass, glinting off of the large amount of dust that flew through the air. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, stocked with everything from sugar and flour to fabric and clothing. Massive wood and glass cases filled most of the available floor space, displaying salt and pepper shakers, fine china, guns and ammunition. Dean was particularly fascinated by one of the cases and didn't seem to be the least bit interested in taking part in any more of the conversation. Sam shook his head.  
  
"Hunting," he said.   
  
"Huh." James pulled down another box, put it on the counter and started digging through it. "Long trip to make in October. Specially without coats."  
  
Sam looked at Dean again, but Dean chuckled soundlessly and shook his head. Sam's mouth narrowed and he tilted his head in irritation.   
  
"We've been here most of the summer," Sam said. "Tracking up in the mountains. Didn't know how long we'd been up there until it started getting colder."  
  
James snorted as he dusted his hands off, but he didn't say anything else. Instead, he moved to the pile of clothes he'd made from the boxes he'd taken down, pulled out a receipt book, and started writing. "Okay, boys. That's two coats, two shirts, and one pair'a boots." He looked up from his scribbling. "Names?"  
  
Sam balked for a second; thinking up names had never really been his department.  
  
"Pancho," Dean said. He stepped up next to Sam and dropped a hat on top of the pile. "This here's my brother, Lefty."  
  
James looked to Sam for confirmation, but all Sam could give him was an awkward smile.  
  
"Pancho and Lefty, then," James said. He looked at Dean more closely now that he could see him better.   
  
They'd cleaned as much of the blood off of themselves as they could with water from a creek they'd stopped at on the way into town, but Dean's wound had bled pretty heavily. They both had the vampires' blood on the front of their shirts but unlike Sam, he wasn't wearing a jacket he could zip shut. That, combined with the holes on the side of his neck, made it obvious that Dean had ended up on the wrong side of something.   
  
"Ya know, yer supposed to eat what yer huntin'," James said. "Not the other way round."  
  
Dean raised his hand and covered the wound self-consciously. "Yeah, well. Never said we were any good at it."  
  
"Uh huh." James finished adding up the things they were buying, and looked up at them. "Ya know this is gonna cost ya, right? All this ya got here, it's thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents. You got that much?"  
  
Sam put his elbows on the counter and leaned forward. "We thought we'd trade for it. You interested?"  
  
"Depends," James said. "Whatchya got?"  
  
Sam pulled the knife from his pocket and put it on the counter.   
  
James' eyes widened in shock and he took a step back. "S'that silver?"   
  
Sam nodded. "Yes, sir. Silver blade, elephant tusk ivory handle."  
  
"Made in 1793," Dean added.   
  
James reached for the handle tentatively, then shook his head and pulled his hand back. "Boys, I ain't... I can't take it. I can't give ya the diff'rence. I ain't got it."  
  
"We don't need it," Dean said. "You own the livery, too, right?"  
  
James nodded his head.  
  
"Give us the clothes, rent us two horses, and give us enough to get a room and supper at the hotel for a couple days. We'll call it even."  
  
James' smile brightened somewhat. He picked the knife up gingerly, taking care not to touch the blade. "Look around the place," he said. "Get whatever ya need. Ya can change in the back room, there." He pointed at a curtain that hung across the back of the store. "I'll go have my boys do ya up a couple horses."  
  
"Appreciate it," Dean said as James disappeared through the door.  
  
As soon as James was gone, Sam turned around and smacked Dean on the arm.  
  
"The hell is that for?" Dean asked.  
  
"Pancho and Lefty? Seriously?"  
  
Dean shrugged and turned away. "Hey, it's a great song."  
  
Sam shook his head in disbelief. "You are an idiot."  
  
"What? Why?"  
  
Sam sighed. "Pancho Villa, Dean," he said, keeping his voice low in case anyone else walked in. "You don't look much like Pancho Villa."  
  
Dean smiled as he added a few more things to the pile on the counter. He started digging through the clothes, separating his from Sam's, and said, "Just don't sell my ass to the Federales to save yours."  
  
"You keep picking names like that, and I just might." Sam picked his clothes up from the counter and followed Dean to the back of the store.  
  
"Yeah, well, you were almost Sundance." Dean pulled back the curtain and motioned for Sam to walk ahead of him. "So I wouldn't bitch too much if I was you."  
  
They changed into the clothes they'd chosen, and Sam was pleasantly surprised that everything James had picked actually fit him. There were clean shirts for both of them, gunbelts and thigh holsters for their guns, and a new pair of boots to replace Sam's tennis shoes. They both kept their own jeans, for no other reason than they were more comfortable in them. Sam had a brown wool field coat that hung to an inch or two above his knees, and Dean had chosen for himself a leather coat that went almost to his ankles.   
  
The coats would have the dual benefits of keeping them warm and keeping their guns hidden. It was obviously perfectly legal to walk around Laramie with holstered firearms on their belts, and no one would give them a second look for having them, but the grip of Sam's Taurus didn't look anything like the kind of guns the residents of Laramie were used to seeing. Dean's Colt was more inconspicuous, but the pearl-inlaid handle would draw more attention than either of them would be comfortable with.  
  
The bell over the door dinged as someone walked into the store. Sam, thinking it was James returning from the livery, slid his machete into place under his belt, picked his hat up, and pushed the curtain open. He dropped it almost immediately and turned, grabbed up one of the bandanas and started tying it loosely around Dean's neck.  
  
"Sam?" Dean said. "What are you doing?"  
  
Sam shook his head as he finished off the knot and adjusted the bandana so that Dean's wound was completely hidden.  
  
"You are never gonna believe who just walked in."  
  
"Hey, Jimmy!" a voice shouted. "Where ya at?"  
  
Dean tilted his head at Sam in confusion. The voice wasn't familiar to either of them, because they'd never heard it, but the face was one that Sam wasn't likely to forget any time soon. He opened the door of the woodburning stove that heated the store and shoved their bloody clothes into it, then closed and latched it again. With a deep breath, he pulled the curtain open and stepped out of the room slowly. Dean followed him warily. They both froze in place when the man standing at the counter turned to look at them.  
  
"Joe!" James walked through the door from the livery at the same time, and his cheerful call pulled the new arrival's attention to him.   
  
Dean and Sam looked at each other without speaking. Covering that bite wound had definitely been a good idea.  
  
"Hey, Pancho, Lefty," James said as he waved them over with his arm. The antique knife in his possession had obviously lifted his spirits and had apparently made him much friendlier toward the strangers in his store. "Joe, this here's Pancho and Lefty, a coupla brothers out from Kansas on a huntin' trip."  
  
Dean nodded silently at the man, and Sam did the same.  
  
"Boys, this here's my brother, Joe."  
  
Sam shared another sideways glance with Dean before forcing himself to smile at both men.   
  
James' brother wore a badge on his chest that said even though James called him Joe, most people called him sheriff. And their damned Winchester luck had struck again, it seemed, just like it always did. Because they knew him, too.   
  
As Josiah Edwards.


	2. Part Two

Dean's mood had lightened considerably since they'd left the general store, even though Sam's had been growing steadily darker. While Sam's thoughts were dominated by figuring out how they'd gotten where – and when – they were, how to get back home, and how to avoid Josiah Edwards while they did it, Dean didn't seem to be thinking about anything other than ways to entertain himself.   
  
The atmosphere in the hotel's restaurant should have been charming, or at least interesting, and he knew that. He was as close as he'd ever be to an actual wild west saloon, complete with massive wooden bar and piano music being played by a rather well-endowed young woman in a bright yellow dress, and he couldn't even bring himself to pay attention to what was going on around him. The sounds of booted footfalls on the wood floors mixed with the laughter and conversations of the patrons, and he didn't pay the people around him any more mind than he would have at any other bar.   
  
Dinner had turned out to be a rather large amount of food, a whole lot more than Sam had expected to get for fifty cents each. They'd had plates heaped with ham, fried potatoes, corn on the cob, and custard, with iced tea to drink and a huge chunk of pie for dessert. Dean had eaten every bite, but Sam hadn't done much more than play with his. Their plates had long since been cleared, and they'd switched from tea to beer, but they were still sitting at the same table. Sam had absolutely refused to let him join in for fear of him getting himself shot, so Dean was watching the poker game going on at the back corner table with interest. Every now and then, Sam heard a giggle coming from that direction, and he wondered who Dean was paying more attention to – the card players themselves or the women who stood behind them.  
  
Sam turned the receipt from the general store over in his hand again. He shouldn't have been surprised by the date written on it, but he was still having a hard time processing it all. They'd woken up in a motel on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming on the morning of May 12, 2007, but they'd be going to bed in a room at the original Union Pacific Hotel, the Thornburg House, on October 28, 1882.  
  
"Do you think he's turned yet?"  
  
Dean didn't seem to have heard him, or was ignoring him if he had, so Sam kicked him under the table.  
  
"Ow! What?"  
  
"Do you think he's been turned yet?" Sam asked again. "Edwards?"  
  
Dean reluctantly pulled his attention away from the table in the corner and leaned his elbows on the table. "I don't know," he said. "Nothing about him really screamed 'vamp' to me. You?"  
  
Sam shook his head. "No. But he had to be turned at some point, right? I mean, we saw the census record..."  
  
"From 1880, yeah," Dean interrupted. "How many vampires do you think care about being counted on the census?"  
  
"Probably not many," Sam admitted. "But he's the sheriff. He's got some power here. He's not gonna want to throw that all away."  
  
"People change when they turn, Sam, you know that. You turn into a monster like that, you're not usually capable of rational thought."  
  
"But Lenore..."  
  
"Is one of the very few rational vampires we've run into, I know. But most of them aren't. Most of them are batshit." Dean smirked. "No pun intended." He glanced back at the poker game, which seemed to be really getting going, and sighed. "So what have you got on that other thing?"  
  
"The 'how did we get here?' thing?"  
  
Dean nodded.  
  
"Nothing. It's supposed to be impossible, but it's obviously very possible, because here we are."  
  
"So what could do it?" Dean asked. "And damn, I wish we had Dad's journal right now."  
  
Sam shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "I don't know if it would do any good. I mean, don't you think he'd have told us about it if he knew time travel was possible?"  
  
"Gee, Sam, I don't know." The sarcasm in Dean's voice was almost tangible. "He was always so open and honest about the stuff he knew."  
  
When he thought of all the implications behind Dean's statement, and what their father's secrecy had done to both of them through the years, Sam couldn't do anything other than nod again. "Okay, so what could do it that we know about, then? It would have to be something powerful, more powerful than we've ever seen."  
  
"Demon of some kind?" Dean asked. "But that wouldn't make any sense, because... why? If anything, a demon would've made sure we couldn't get out of that warehouse, not pulled us out."  
  
"Witchcraft?" Sam said. "Spellwork of some kind. Maybe a cursed object?"  
  
"That doesn't make any sense, either. Why curse an object to send people a hundred and twenty-five years back in time?"  
  
"Maybe it was a fluke, an accident or something. We woke up in the same spot we were when we got hit by that wave, though, so maybe... I don't know. Maybe whatever it is was tied to that location."  
  
Dean smiled at that. "Which means we have to go back out there, right?"  
  
Sam nodded slowly, confused at how quickly Dean perked up at that thought. "Yeah. In the morning. Why are you so happy about that?"  
  
"Because." Dean grinned from ear to ear. "It means we get to ride those horses after all."  
  
"Pancho! Lefty!"  
  
Sam and Dean turned toward the door and the voice that had called their names. James and Josiah Edwards were walking toward them.   
  
James – or Jim, as he was insisting they call him now – was definitely the more boisterous of the two brothers, once they'd gotten past the casual indifference he showed toward them at first. Sam had learned that from just the few moments that he and Dean had spent with the Edwards brothers in the general store. Sam did have to wonder how much of his sudden friendliness was due to the knife they'd given him, and how much of it was just him. He guessed it was probably a combination of both – their willingness to trade away something so valuable made him more willing to show them a little kindness.  
  
He was dressed in the same clothes he'd worn in the store: a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and held out of his way by a pair of black sleeve garters, an unbuttoned dark brown vest, tan pants, and a pair of simple work boots. His light brown hair was longer than most men in Laramie seemed to wear theirs, almost covering his ears and hanging down in his face. He seemed young, twenty-two or twenty-three at the most, and Sam found himself liking him almost immediately.  
  
Josiah was as different from his younger brother as he could possibly be. He was as quiet and pensive as Jim was outgoing, as reserved as Jim was sociable. He wore the same clothes Sam had seen on pictures of a hundred different sheriffs from the same time period, white shirt with a black string tie, black pants, vest and jacket, black cowboy boots and a tan hat. And of course, his badge. His hair was darker and shorter than Jim's, trimmed close to his head above his ears but a bit longer on top.  
  
Sam guessed his age at around thirty, no more than a year or two in either direction. Dean was right about there being nothing overly "vampire-ish" about him, but being close to him still made Sam uncomfortable. All he could think when he saw him was that the only difference between the Joe Edwards walking toward their table in 1882 and the Josiah Edwards that had tried to kill Dean in 2007 was the clothes he wore. If he hadn't been turned yet, it was going to happen soon.  
  
"So, boys." Jim clapped Dean on the back as he passed him, then pulled out a chair and sat down. "How was supper?"  
  
"Big," Sam said.  
  
"But good," Dean added. "Real good."  
  
Josiah settled himself in the other chair and nodded at them wordlessly in greeting. Dean and Sam did the same in return.  
  
A few seconds of awkward silence passed before Jim crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward. "Okay, here's the thing, boys. I been talkin' to Joe here about yer huntin' trip. And the thing is, we don't neither one believe you."  
  
Sam fought the urge to fidget under the scrutiny of two pair of blue eyes, one bright and slightly bloodshot, the other dark and piercing. He felt Dean stiffen slightly across from him, but neither of them visibly reacted to what Jim had said.  
  
"It's a dumb story, boys, real dumb. But the thing is..." He turned to Dean. "Pancho, that bite on your neck?"  
  
Dean nodded once.  
  
"I've seen one before. Not exactly like it, but real close." Josiah's voice took them both by surprise, and they turned toward him. "There's somethin' in those mountains, and it's been killin' people round here. I'm thinkin' ya know what it is, and I'm thinkin' ya tangled with it."  
  
Sam and Dean shared a look across the table, and Sam swallowed hard.  
  
"Joe's been tryin' to catch it or kill it for months," Jim said. "But we don' know what it is. We're thinkin' it's got somethin'a do with that ol' wizard man up there..."  
  
"What wizard?" Sam asked.  
  
"He's not a wizard," Josiah said. "He's just an ol' hermit. Has a cabin up there, moved in a coupla months ago. Coincidence."  
  
"Everybody says he's a wizard," Jim argued. "Real strange stuff happenin' up in them mountains now, since he showed up. Flashin' lights and windstorms and all kinda stuff."  
  
"Stop, Jimmy," Josiah said. He steepled his fingers on the table in front of him, and looked directly at Dean. "I don't care why yer really here, boys. Long as you leave these folks be, you can stay long as ya want. What I want to know is – did ya see what bit you?"  
  
Dean shook his head slowly without looking away from Josiah's eyes. "No," he lied. "I didn't."  
  
Josiah turned to Sam. "Did you?"  
  
"No, sir," Sam said. "I just saw a blur of something. It was moving too fast."  
  
"You sure?" Josiah sounded disappointed.  
  
"Positive," Dean said. "Never saw it."  
  
Josiah looked across the table at Jim and sighed. "I told you. Waste of time." He pushed away from the the table and started to stand.  
  
"But," Dean interrupted. "If you want help finding it, we're willing to volunteer."  
  
Josiah settled back down in his seat. "You sure 'bout that?"  
  
Dean nodded again. "Thing bit me in the neck," he said. "Do just about anything to stop it from doing it again."  
  
"And I told you," Jim said with more than a hint of victory in his voice. "We'd get something outta them."  
  
Dean held up his arm and caught the bartender's attention, then held up four fingers and pointed at his empty beer glass. The bartender nodded once before going to fill his order.  
  
"Tell us what we need to know, Sheriff," Sam said.  
  
"First thing, call me Joe. All the 'sheriff this' and 'sheriff that' stuff makes me nervous."  
  
Dean smiled broadly. "Okay, then, Joe. Tell us what you need us to do."  
  


* * *

  
"So how'd you end up in Laramie, Joe?"  
  
As the night had gone on, the conversation had moved away from the "wizard" and the "thing" in the mountains. Under normal circumstances, Dean would have been all over the "thing," because he was sure it was a hunt of some kind, but he didn't want to get pulled into a job with no weapons. The "wizard" was something they'd have to think about looking into, though, if their search in the morning didn't turn up anything else powerful enough to bend time.  
  
Sam and Jim were still sitting at the table, talking. Dean and Joe had moved to a smaller table to play cards and talk, and they'd both had a couple of beers.  
  
Joe tilted his head a bit and looked thoughtful. "Jimmy," was all he said.  
  
Dean snorted and raised his mug. "Here's to little brothers being a pain in the ass."  
  
Joe didn't return the toast, though. He didn't even smile. "We lived in Cheyenne when our pa died. Jimmy was eighteen, took it real hard. And one day, he just up'n disappeared. Our mama went to her grave not knowin' if he was alive or dead."  
  
"Wow," Dean said. "That's rough."  
  
Joe nodded slowly. "Then he just showed up, outta the blue. Told me he's livin' in Laramie. Didn't have nobody left 'cept for him, so when he came back, I came with him."  
  
"And now you're the sheriff."  
  
"And now I'm the sheriff," Joe said with a nod. "Last one died on a..." His words trailed off and he looked hard at Dean. "Huntin' trip in the mountains."  
  
Dean forced a smile.  
  
"I know I said I don't care, and it's not gonna change nothin'. But where you from, Pancho?"  
  
"Kansas," Dean said. "That part was true. As for the rest..." He shrugged. "We were on our way to California. We hooked up with a coupla guys in Buford, said they knew a good trail through here. Last thing I remember is starting to set up camp last night, up in the mountains. Woke up this morning in the hills outside of town, and everything we own was gone." The story came effortlessly, a mix of truth and lie blended smoothly enough that he doubted anyone would be able to pick it apart.   
  
"Then why'd ya lie?" Joe asked. "Why not just tell Jimmy what happened to ya?"  
  
"Embarrassed, mostly. We're not either one quite sure how we ended up here, and I feel kinda dumb about that. I mean, you think you know a guy, right? You talk to him, get to know him, start to trust him and even call him friend, and then it turns out he's a..."  
  
Dean looked up at Joe, at the intense look of attention on his face, and he couldn't finish that sentence.  
  
He didn't have to, though, because Joe understood his meaning. He nodded slowly.  
  
"All kindsa monsters in the world, Pancho. And most of 'em are real good at hidin' right in front of ya."  
  


* * *

  
Sam had barely closed the door to their room before Dean spun on him.  
  
"We've gotta tell him, Sam."  
  
Sam walked past him, shaking his head sadly. "We can't."  
  
"I just spent the last three hours playing cards and drinking with the guy. And talking to him. And you know what I found out?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"He's a great guy, and an awesome big brother."  
  
"I know." Jim had told Sam all about Joe. He knew that Joe was the only reason Jim had survived their parents dying, and that Jim was the only reason Joe was even in Laramie.  
  
"We can stop it, Sam," Dean continued. "All we have to do is warn him. We don't even have to tell him why."  
  
"No, we can't, Dean," Sam said as he flopped down on his bed.  
  
Dean followed him and stood over him. "You know what he's gonna become!"  
  
"Yes, I do!" Sam returned hotly. "And I hate it as much as you do! You have no idea what I'd give to stop him from... God, Dean, he tried to kill you."  
  
"He's gonna kill a shitload of people before he gets to me again," Dean pointed out. "We can save them, all of them. And Joe. But we have got to..."  
  
Sam jumped to his feet, using his full height to his advantage and forcing Dean to step back.   
  
"We can't!"  
  
Dean didn't stay back for long, but stepped right back into Sam's face.  
  
"Why the hell not?!"  
  
"Because in the future, in our future, Dean, Joe Edwards is a vampire." He hated it, hated it with everything that was in him, but he knew that there was nothing they could do about it. "If we tell him, if we warn him, if we stop it from happening the way we already know it did, we're changing the future. We're changing our future. And I know it seems like a small thing, just save this one guy and save all these other people at the same time, but damn it, we don't know what else that'll change."  
  
Dean stepped back again, then turned away and walked to the window.  
  
"I know it sucks." Sam lowered his voice as his anger gave way to understanding. "And I don't like it. I hate it. I hate that we can't save him, or the people he's going to kill. I hate that Jim is gonna lose him like that. And it hurts, I know that, and maybe if we didn't know, then... it would be easier, if nothing else. But we do know. And we have to let it happen the way it did the first time, because if we stop it, we could be making things a hell of a lot worse."  
  
Dean leaned his head against the window and looked down at the empty street below.  
  
"I like the guy, Sam," he said quietly. "And it's killing me to... he's a good man. And he's gonna lose that. He's gonna become a damn monster, and he's not gonna be able to do anything about it."  
  
"I know." Sam sat back down on his bed again. "But at least we know what not to interfere with there. Every minute we stay, we run the risk of changing something. We've gotta find a way to get home before we break something we can't fix."  
  
"First thing in the morning," Dean said. "We head back out to those mountains, we find what brought us here, and we get the hell out. Because if we have to stay more than a day, if I have to keep looking at him, knowing what I know... I'll tell him, Sam. I will."  
  
Sam sighed deeply and laid back on the bed. "Then here's hoping that we find something in the mountains that'll make this all make sense."  
  


* * *

  
The sun was just coming up over the mountains when they reached their destination. They'd started out before sunrise, because neither of them wanted to run the risk of seeing either of the Edwards brothers on their way out. As hard a time as Dean was having not telling Joe what was going to happen to him, Sam was having almost as much trouble with not telling Jim, and the more they avoided the temptation the easier it was to resist it.   
  
They pulled their horses up next to a stand of bushes near one of the rock formations at the base of the Laramie Mountains and stopped.  
  
Dean jumped down from his saddle with a whoop. "Ya know, I miss my baby, but I gotta say, this is kinda fun."  
  
Sam snorted and dismounted his own horse much more slowly and carefully. "Yeah, you would think so."  
  
Dean noticed Sam's obvious discomfort and chuckled. "Little saddle sore there, Sammy?"  
  
Sam shot him a dirty look over his shoulder as he continued working out the kinks in his muscles. "What, you aren't?"  
  
"Are you kidding?" Dean led his horse to one of the nearby bushes and looped the reins loosely around one of the branches. "I was born for this."  
  
Sam put his hands on his hips and leaned back, trying to alleviate the ache that had worked its way up from his tailbone. "You've got the legs for it."  
  
Dean took Sam's reins from his hand with a smile and cocked his head. "Hey, chicks think bowlegs are sexy."  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever you say there, Pancho."  
  
Dean grinned as he hitched Sam's horse to the bush, then turned his attention to the weapons. He checked his Colt in his holster before pulling the machete out of Sam's saddle and handing it to him. "I do miss our weapons, though," he said as he hung the other machete from his belt. "Iron-loaded pistols and a couple of machetes won't kill much."  
  
Sam shrugged, tested the weight and balance of the machete in his hand, then checked the Taurus at his hip. "They'll kill the things we're most likely to run into out here."  
  
"Yeah?" Dean said. He grabbed a handhold on one of the massive rocks and pulled himself up it. "Like what?"  
  
Sam looked up at him from the ground. "Like snakes."  
  
Dean froze in place, then slowly turned his head and looked down at Sam. "Snakes," he said. "Why'd it have to be snakes?"  
  
For a brief moment, Sam thought that Dean was serious, and he wondered when Dean had started being afraid of snakes. Then Dean cracked another grin and winked.  
  
"Funny, Indy," Sam huffed. "Climb."  
  
"Ya know, I know we're stuck here and it really kinda sucks, but there's no reason we can't enjoy it."  
  
"I'll look back on it fondly when we get home," Sam said.  
  
"Hey, Sam, there's a snake in my boot!"  
  
Sam just shook his head. "Woody, Dean? Really? We're quoting Disney movies now?"  
  
Dean laughed, turned back around, raised his arms in the air, and jumped to the next rock. His hat fell off and dangled from the cord around his neck, his coat flew out behind him, and he looked every bit like a little kid playing dress-up as a cowboy. Sam rolled his eyes again, shook his head, and pulled himself up the rock face. They'd just gotten started, and Dean was already in top form.  
  
"Somebody poisoned the waterhole!"  
  
It was going to be a very long day.  
  


* * *

  
"Do you even know what we're looking for out here?" Dean asked.  
  
They'd been climbing up and down, weaving in and around the rocks for four hours, and they had yet to find anything that looked even remotely out of place. They were standing at the top of the formation they'd just climbed, looking down at what in their world would have been the outskirts of Laramie, but was nothing but undeveloped nature. The sun was high in the sky above them, and they could see for miles.  
  
"Not really," Sam answered. He turned around and looked the other direction, back toward the mountains that rose up behind them. "But it would have to be pretty powerful, right? So it should be obvious."  
  
"So have you narrowed it down even?" Dean said. He was looking down the side of the rock they were standing on, but Sam couldn't see what he was looking at. "A cursed object or..."  
  
"I'm actually really thinking..."  
  
Dean suddenly spun around and wrapped his hand around Sam's mouth, silencing him. Sam's eyes widened in surprise, but Dean shook his head at him in a silent warning. He nodded in understanding, so Dean moved his hand away, then tipped his head in the direction he'd been looking before. Sam stepped closer to the side of the rock and looked down.   
  
There was a camp of some sort below them, with at least a dozen men milling around it. They didn't seem to have noticed Sam and Dean above them yet, and were just talking. The sounds of voices floated up to the top of the rock, but not the words themselves.  
  
"What are they doing here?" Sam whispered.  
  
"Take a wild guess," Dean whispered back. "There's a lot of reasons why a bunch of guys might have a camp in the middle of the mountains. One or two of those might be good, but the rest of 'em? Probably not."  
  
"So what do we do?"  
  
"Nothing," Dean answered. He turned away and walked back to the side of the rock they'd just climbed. "We head back to Laramie."  
  
"But we've got to find a way to get home! If they're just people..."  
  
Dean spun back around, drawing himself up to his full height and getting as close to Sam as he could. "Outlaws kill people, Sam," he said. "And we are not gonna end up a coupla notches on some hotshot gunslinger's barrel. You got it?"  
  
Sam nodded. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I got it."  
  
Dean pointed at the ground angrily. Sam lowered his head in contrition and started climbing down the rock face without another word. He could feel Dean standing above him, watching him climb down, and he heard a scuffling which he assumed was Dean starting to follow. His feet hit the ground, and he tipped his head back to watch his brother's descent.  
  
"Sam!"  
  
He had no idea what the hell tackled him, but the next thing Sam knew he was face-down in the dirt.  
  
His first instinct was to roll to his back and fight his way free, but he couldn't throw whatever it was off. Then he tried to push up to his knees, but he couldn't do that, either. Whatever had him pinned, it was way stronger than he was. So he ducked and covered his head with his arms to protect it from the multiple blows that were raining down on it.  
  
Something tangled in his hair and pulled his head back. He caught a flash of white, the scent of fetid breath, and then a spray of red.   
  
His head slammed back to the ground hard enough to leave him seeing stars.  
  
And then Dean was there, shoving the weight on his back away and pulling him to his feet. "You okay? Sam? Sammy?"  
  
Sam nodded as he tried to collect his thoughts and process what had just happened. "Dean, what...?"  
  
"They're not outlaws," Dean answered hurriedly. "They're fucking vampires." Dean put his hand against Sam's back and shoved him forward. "We gotta get outta here."  
  
They both heard the scuffling that time, a sound that Sam finally recognized as boots dragging across the rocky ground. There was definitely more than one of them coming, and they weren't far away.  
  
"Run, Sam. Go!"  
  
They both ran as fast as they could, weaving their way around the rocks they'd been climbing on. Sam missed his step once and stumbled, but Dean grabbed the back of his coat and steadied him before he fell. Neither one was even trying to run silently, because it would lose time they didn't have, and it wouldn't have made any difference.  
  
The vampires weren't far behind them, and they were making just as much noise and being just as obvious about their location as he and Dean were. They had a good head start on them, but vampires were faster than humans, which had Sam more than a little worried. He and Dean weren't familiar with the territory they were running across, and he didn't know how much farther they had to go to reach the horses. He knew they'd done a lot of circling around as they'd climbed, but what if they'd gone further than he thought they had?  
  
One of the vampires got close enough to Dean to grab the end of his coat where it trailed out behind him. Dean suddenly flew backwards, fighting to keep his balance and stay on his feet. Sam turned around to help him.  
  
"Keep going!" Dean shouted.  
  
Sam ignored him, raised his machete, and ran back to help. By the time he reached them, Dean had already spun on the vampire, raised his own machete, and beheaded it cleanly.   
  
"I said keep going!" Dean said angrily as he turned and started running again, pushing Sam ahead of him as he did.  
  
Sam didn't know how long they'd been running when they finally reached the horses, and he didn't know how far behind them the vampires were, but he honestly didn't care. All of his earlier complaints about traveling on horseback were forgotten as he grabbed both sets of reins from the bush, tossed one to Dean, put his foot in the stirrup and pulled himself up.   
  
All he could think as he kicked his feet back and snapped the reins was that he hoped a vampire couldn't outrun a galloping horse.  
  


* * *

  
The sun was almost straight overhead when they reached the edge of Laramie. There'd been no sign of pursuit from the vampires, but Sam guessed that they weren't exactly the sociable type and would probably avoid town, especially during the day.   
  
They pulled their horses up in front of the hotel.  
  
"Well, this trip just got a lot less fun," Dean said as he swung his leg down to the ground.  
  
Sam dismounted his own horse and hitched it to the post. "Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?" he said. "Jim and Joe said people have been turning up dead with bites like yours. And the one that’s going to turn Joe has to be around here somewhere."  
  
"Yeah, I know," Dean said with a slow nod. "I just didn't expect them to be right there. And I hate running into evil things I'm not expecting."  
  
"We can't take them on," Sam pointed out. "We're not equipped to deal with that many of them."  
  
Dean nodded. "No, you’re right. If we had the Colt, maybe we could..."  
  
Sam's head snapped up. It had been months since Dean had mentioned the Colt, and it took him by surprise. They knew where the gun had gone and why, but talking about it always ended badly, mainly because they disagreed on whether the price paid with that gun was worth what it had bought them.  
  
Dean cleared his throat and looked down at himself, at the blood that covered his hands, arms, and front of his coat.  
  
"You take care of the horses," he said. "Wipe 'em down and get 'em some water. I'm gonna go up to the room and get this blood off me before someone sees it."  
  
Sam nodded, and Dean walked into the hotel.  
  
He turned back to the horses and dug through his saddlebags, looking for a rag. The sound of hoofbeats caught his attention, and he looked over his saddle. Six riders were coming down the street toward him, and from the looks on their faces, they were there on business. Sam didn't recognize any of the men, but his internal danger alert went off. He ducked back behind the horses again.  
  
They didn't ride all the way through town, but stopped in front of the sheriff's office two buildings down. Sam heard the sounds of boots on the wooden planks of the sidewalk as Josiah Edwards himself came out to greet them.  
  
"You're not supposed to be in town, boys."  
  
"We got a problem, Sheriff."  
  
That didn't sound very good.  
  
"What kinda problem you got, Silas?"  
  
"We lost Harkins and Earl."  
  
Great. Sam had a pretty good idea what had happened to them.  
  
"Then go find 'em. I ain't got time for this right now."  
  
"They's dead, Sheriff. Heads chopped clean off by some boy I ain't never seen a'fore."  
  
“What’d he look like?”  
  
“Short brown hair, long coat. S’all we saw. Tha’s his horse over at the hotel, there.”  
  
He didn't know if he actually heard Joe's sigh or if he just imagined it.  
  
“Damn it, Pancho.”  
  
But he didn't need to hear any more.   
  


* * *

  
"Dean!" Sam closed the door quickly and hurried over to the window, walking right past Dean, who was standing at the wash basin with a pitcher of water in his hand, looking confused. "We've got a problem."  
  
Dean put the pitcher down, picked up a towel, and joined Sam at the window while drying his hands. He looked out just in time to see Joe, rifle in hand, cross the street. He had nine men with him that Sam could see – three had rifles, and the six that had ridden into town carried pistols. Jim was one of them.  
  
"Damn, that was quick," Sam muttered.  
  
"Who are they?" Dean asked.  
  
"I think most of them are vampires," Sam said. "They were telling Joe about you cutting their friends' heads off."  
  
"Well, shit," Dean said. He started rolling his sleeves down and buttoning his cuffs hurriedly. "Didn't see that one coming."  
  
Joe and the men disappeared under the roof of the porch outside the window. Dean jogged across the room to grab his hat and machete. Sam started pushing the heavy wooden dresser across the door.  
  
"What are you doing that for?" Dean asked.  
  
"They're coming for you, Dean," Sam said earnestly. He shoved the dresser forward another inch. "A whole bunch of vampires with a few humans and a sheriff who thinks you just murdered two innocent men."  
  
"I know that," Dean said.  
  
"You know what they did to murderers in towns like this, don't you?"  
  
"Well, yeah," Dean said with a nod.  
  
"Then we need to stop them from coming in!" Sam insisted.  
  
"No. We need to get the hell out, is what we need to do."  
  
Sam shook his head. "There's only one set of stairs and they're coming up it!"  
  
Dean smiled. "We're not gonna use the stairs."  
  
"Then how are we supposed to...?" He trailed off when he noticed that Dean was staring out the window. "No. You're not serious."  
  
"They're coming."  
  
"Dean..."  
  
"There's only one way outta here."  
  
"Listen..."  
  
"They're gonna hang me, Sam!"  
  
"This is crazy!"  
  
Dean smushed his hat down on his head, grabbed Sam's sleeve, and ran toward the window. Sam had just enough time to raise his arms to protect his face, and then they were jumping in unison, smashing through the glass and landing on the porch roof below. They ran to the edge and jumped off, hit the ground with bone-jarring impact, and rolled, then pushed themselves back to their feet.  
  
They were already on the horses and backing away from the hotel when Joe Edwards emerged from the hotel with his rifle raised. He managed to squeeze off a few shots in their direction, as did the vampires and men that flanked him. Sam ducked low as he finished turning his horse around, snapped the reins, and headed for the far edge of town.  
  
Dean's horse seemed to stumble a bit, and Dean rocked forward in his saddle, but he recovered quickly. By the time Sam's horse galloped out of the street and back onto the open plain, Dean had caught up and was right beside him.  
  
They rode as hard as they dared, heading straight east. Neither of them had any idea where they were going other than away from Laramie.   
  


* * *

  
They'd been riding for half an hour when Dean started slowing down and falling behind. Sam circled back around and pulled up beside him.  
  
"Dean?" he said. "You okay?"  
  
"Yeah," Dean gasped. "I think I just... just need a minute."  
  
"There's a posse behind us, Dean!"   
  
They'd seen the group of horses a few times in the past thirty minutes, when their path had taken them up high enough to look back. Sam thought he'd counted at least a dozen of them, but they'd been too far away to tell for sure. But it didn't matter how many there were. All that mattered was that there was a hanging posse coming for his brother.   
  
"We've got to keep going!"  
  
"Yeah," Dean said. "In a minute."  
  
Sam realized that Dean was wobbling badly in his saddle, and he jumped down from his horse. He reached Dean's side just in time to catch him as he fell.   
  
"Shit, Dean, what's wrong?" He looked down at his hand, both shocked and horrified by the blood that covered it. "Are you hit?"  
  
Dean didn't answer him.  
  
"Dean! Are you hit?"  
  
Dean nodded slowly.   
  
"Fuck!" Sam laid him out on the ground and started searching for the source of the bleeding. The blood that stained his shirt from the vampires he'd killed had dried to a dark brown, which made the bright red that much more obvious.   
  
"Not that bad," Dean said. "Had to keep moving."  
  
Sam pushed Dean's shirt up and out of the way frantically. He found the wound easily – he'd never stop being amazed at how much damage such a small hole could cause or how much blood could pour out of one – low on Dean's right side, just above the waist band of his jeans.  
  
"God damn it, Dean!" Sam said. "Why didn't you tell me?"  
  
"Posse on our ass," Dean said weakly. "Didn't have much choice about riding."  
  
"Well, you can't go any further like this. You'll bleed to death." He pulled his bandana off and pressed it against the bleeding wound.  
  
Dean winced and moaned in pain. "Can't stay here," he gasped. "A posse full of vampires. Hanging me is the least of what they'll do." It took him too long to catch his breath between sentences. Sam didn't like it at all. "So unless you've got something more powerful than a machete on ya..."  
  
Sam stared off into the distance as thought occurred to him. "The wizard."  
  
Dean blinked in confusion. "The what?"  
  
"The wizard in the mountains," Sam repeated. "The one Jim and Joe were talking about last night."  
  
"You think he can help?"  
  
Sam shrugged. "It's worth a shot, isn't it?"  
  
"We don't even know..." He couldn't even finish a sentence without stopping to breathe. He was going downhill too fast. "If he's real."  
  
"But what if he is? What if he's the one that brought us here? What if he's the one who can send us home?" All 'home' meant to Sam at that moment was a hospital for Dean, and that was more than enough reason for him to find the wizard. But Sam could tell from the look in his eyes that Dean needed more than that; Dean needed an absolute, even if it wasn't true. "If we find him, we can go home."  
  
"Okay," Dean said. He pressed down on the bandana with his right hand and held his left arm up. "Get me up. Let's go find him."  
  
Together, they managed to get Dean to his feet before his knees buckled. Sam caught him again and kept him from collapsing into the dirt.  
  
"Okay." Dean's voice was raspy, breathless, and filled with pain. "Change of plan. I'll stay here. You go find him."  
  
"Dean..."  
  
"All these rocks and crannies around. Stash me somewhere. I'll be fine."  
  
He didn't like it. Dean was wounded, badly, and he shouldn't leave him alone. But he helped Dean back to his feet anyway, and together they slipped between two of the larger rock formations. Sam helped Dean settle to the ground, and he leaned against the rocks behind him. He'd be hidden from anyone coming up the path, as long as they stayed on it. If someone decided to dismount and start searching on foot...  
  
"Leave me a canteen. Go, Sam."  
  
"I can't..." He shook his head in denial.   
  
"Not much time," Dean said. "If they see the horses, we're screwed. You gotta go."  
  
"I can't leave you here, Dean. If they find you, if you..."  
  
Dean wrapped his hand around Sam's arm and squeezed. "I get it. I do. But if you don't go, if you don't find this wizard, we're both gonna..." Sam could see the truth in Dean's eyes, all the words that he wasn't saying.   
  
"I don't wanna die here, Sam. Go. Please."  
  
Sam went.  
  


* * *

  
He had no idea where he was going.  
  
He'd been riding for what seemed like days, even though he knew it was only an hour, and he wasn't any closer to finding the cabin than he'd been when he'd left Dean behind. And he knew Dean had wanted him to go, knew they needed help and the "wizard" in the mountains was the best chance they had, knew that he'd had to go, knew that Dean had a bullet in him and couldn't go with him, but that wasn't the damn point.  
  
Dean was dying, and he'd left him behind.  
  
He slowed his horse to a walk and looked around, hoping to find some sign of a cabin, or a trail, or any sign of humanity at all. He heard a sound behind him and turned toward it. His sudden movement spooked his horse, and before he could do anything to calm it, it bolted out from under him. He found himself sitting on a very sore backside in the dirt.  
  
"You really should be taught the proper way to ride a horse, Winchester."  
  
Sam froze, then turned around slowly.  
  
There was a man standing on the hill right behind him, a man he could swear hadn't been there before. It was hard for Sam to tell his age at that distance – he could have been anywhere from thirty-five to sixty. He was a large man, at least six foot tall and powerfully built. He had curly brown hair that just covered his ears, a brown beard with specks of grey, and dark eyes that held more than a hint of amusement. His clothes weren't all that different from what most of the men in Laramie had been wearing, but they seemed to be in much better shape, and he was wearing a fancy coat that hung to his knees. He was smiling down at Sam kindly.  
  
Sam pushed himself to his feet quickly, knocking the dust from his pants as he stood. "You know my name?"  
  
The man's smile grew even wider. "Well, I certainly know that it isn't Lefty."  
  
Sam gaped, open-jawed, as the man started walking down the hill toward him. "Your brother's idea, wasn't it? That name?" Sam narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but he nodded anyway. "From what I understand, it's going to be a good song."  
  
Sam blinked twice, then rubbed his eyes with his fingers. He must have hit his head when he fell, because he was hallucinating. He had to be.  
  
"Gotta be a mirage," he whispered to himself.  
  
"I was unaware that mirages could talk," the man said.  
  
Sam shook his head, more confused than suspicious now. "How do you...?"   
  
The man had gotten close enough for Sam to really see him. He looked familiar somehow, like someone Sam had seen once or twice, not so long ago.  
  
"You're the wizard, aren't you?" he said. "The one Jim and Joe were talking about."  
  
The man shrugged and stepped closer, and suddenly Sam was seeing his face staring back at him from the page of a book, a book his father had given him to read when Sam wanted to learn more about the weapons they used.  
  
"Holy shit," he breathed. "You're Samuel Colt."


	3. Part Three

Colt's cabin wasn't very far from where Sam had fallen from his horse, but it was well-hidden enough that Sam never would have found it on his own. They were almost walking through the door before Sam even realized there was a structure of any kind in front of him.  
  
"I really, really need your help," Sam was saying.   
  
Colt hadn't said a single word in the five minutes it had taken them to walk to his cabin, but that hadn't stopped Sam from talking to him.  
  
"My brother, he's hurt, gutshot, and I had to leave him out in the quarry. Please!"  
  
Colt opened the door to the cabin and ushered Sam inside. Once the door was closed securely behind them, he turned around. "You must be careful around here, Winchester," he said. "The mountains have ears, and a friendly smile can hide the face of a monster."  
  
"The vampires," Sam said. "You know about them."  
  
"Well, of course I do, my boy. They are my closest neighbors, after all."  
  
Sam looked around the interior of the small cabin. It wasn't much more than a shed, really, a small square structure with rough-hewn planks for walls and a thatch roof. The single room was filled with long tables covered in various gadgets and tools. The only signs that someone lived there were the bed in one corner and the small sitting area arranged around the stone fireplace in the other. "Wait, how do you live here at all? You died twenty years ago!"  
  
Colt tilted his head and looked at Sam with an expression of disappointment. "Now surely, Sam Winchester, a hunter such as yourself should have no trouble explaining away a miniscule little detail like that."  
  
"You're a spirit?"   
  
Colt shook his head. He settled himself down in one of the two dusty armchairs and motioned for Sam to have a seat in the other.  
  
"I'd say you faked your own death," Sam said as he sat down. "But you're the same age you were when you died. Or... didn't die..."  
  
"I'm an inventor, Winchester. Think about it."  
  
Sam put it together in his head, added the fact that he was talking to a man who'd been dead for twenty years to the fact that he'd been in the mountains looking for a wizard. "You're a witch."  
  
"I prefer the term warlock, actually, but yes." Colt held his hand up. "White magic only, though, so there is no need to worry for my immortal soul."  
  
"That's how you did it," Sam said with a small smile. "You command white magic. That's how you built the Colt!" He sat forward in his chair in sudden excitement. "Do you have it with you here? I could use it to save Dean!"  
  
It was Colt's turn to blink in confusion. "Which one?"  
  
"The Colt," Sam insisted. "The one that can kill everything."  
  
Colt shook his head. "That's impossible, my boy. There are some things that cannot be killed."  
  
"No, this gun really can kill anything. I've seen it."  
  
Colt waved his hand. "It is not a matter for us to argue right now. It is a conversation for you to have at another time and in another place, with one much more powerful than I." Colt leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "Now, tell me about this gun. You say that I made it?"  
  
Sam nodded.  
  
"When?"  
  
"In the fall of 1835," Sam said. "Under Halley's comet, on the night the Alamo fell."  
  
Colt's face fell in disappointment again. "Well, now, that's not possible, either."  
  
"What?" Sam asked. "Why not?"  
  
"Do they not teach children anything in history class? I could haven't made anything the night the Alamo fell in 1835, because the Alamo didn't fall in 1835. It fell in March of 1836."  
  
Sam's face fell, and all of his hopes of being able to protect Dean from the vampires until they could find a way home went with it. "So the legend is... it's wrong? You don't have it?"  
  
"Tell me your story, Winchester," Colt said, instead of answering the question. "How do you come to be here?"  
  
"I don't know," Sam said with a shake of his head. He pushed himself up from the chair and started pacing around the cabin. "One minute we were cleaning out a vampire nest, had them all except the leader. There was this... I don't know what it was, really. A ripple or something, and it hit us. We passed out and woke up here."  
  
Colt pressed two fingers to his lips in thought. "Tell me, this vampire nest you were cleaning, was it approximately two miles outside of Laramie?"  
  
"No," Sam answered. "We were in the city. In a warehouse on the east side of town."  
  
"Oh." Colt's voice sounded almost contrite. "Well, then, it is safe for me to assume that one hundred and twenty-five years from now, Laramie will be a much larger place than what it is currently?"  
  
Sam nodded.  
  
"And you and your brother, you arrived here, in 1882, yesterday afternoon?"  
  
Sam nodded again.  
  
"I owe you an apology, young man. You and your brother."  
  
"What?" Sam asked. "Why?"  
  
"Time travel is a marvelous thing, but I am afraid it is not an exact science, you see. You can chose your date of origin and your destination date, but it is much harder to control your location. I've avoided that difficulty by always traveling to and from the exact same geographical location, but that does have the unfortunate side effect of opening more than those two places on the timeline."  
  
"I'm sorry," Sam said, shaking his head. "But, what?"  
  
"I started with farsight, which is far simpler, but I eventually learned to travel through time. Unfortunately, I have not yet managed to contain my spellcasting to only my departure and arrival times. When I open a rift, it opens across all simultaneous spots in timespace along the same axis. I thought that I had chosen a location isolated enough to prevent any potential problems, but it appears that I severely underestimated how large Laramie would become."  
  
Sam just blinked.   
  
"I myself returned here from 1854 yesterday afternoon. You and your brother got caught in my... blastwave, for lack of a better term."  
  
"So it was you?" Sam asked. "You're the one who brought us here?"  
  
Colt nodded. "Yes, almost certainly. Unless there is another time traveling warlock around these parts who I have yet to encounter. And I'm sure you'll agree that the odds of that are too remote to be worth entertaining."  
  
Sam nodded excitedly. "So if you brought us here, does that mean... can you send us back? Can you send us home?"  
  
"Well, I would imagine so, yes. It only takes a few moments to prepare the spell, and so long as I stay out of the way... oh, never mind me, Winchester." Colt stood up from his chair and walked toward one of the work tables which was so stacked with books that the wood sagged under their weight. He picked up one of the smaller books and opened it, then looked back at Sam over his shoulder. "You just go and fetch your brother. We'll see about sending you home."  
  
Sam's face fell.  
  
"What's the problem, my boy?"  
  
"My brother," Sam explained. "He's the reason I need the Colt." He stepped forward nervously, his mind again filled with images of Dean – pale, shaky, gasping and sweating – leaning against the rocks in the quarry. "He's hurt, maybe dying. We were being chased by a posse of mostly vampires, and if they've found him..."  
  
"Oh. Yes, that would present a problem, wouldn't it? I take it there is more to your story than you've told me."  
  
Sam nodded slowly. "A lot more."  
  
"Then perhaps you would care to explain it to me?" Colt picked up another spell book, an incredibly thick one, and laid it out on another table. "If I'm going to build you a gun that can kill a vampire, then we've got time for you to start at the beginning."  
  


* * *

  
Dean didn't know how long he'd been there, but he knew it was longer than he'd expected to be. It wasn't that he'd thought Sam would be back before then, because he hadn't. He hoped more than anything that he'd see Sam sitting at his side soon, telling him that they were going home and it was all going to be okay, but he didn't expect it.  
  
Because even if the wizard was real, and even if Sam did find him and bring him back, Dean expected to be dead long before then.  
  
He'd been shot enough times in his life that he knew what to expect most of the time – the dizziness from the blood loss, the low fever from the infection that was already setting in, the pain from the wound itself. He'd never been shot in the gut before, though, so that aspect was new to him. He'd always heard that if the blood coming from a gut wound was black, the person wouldn't survive, and the blood coming out of him was about as dark as he'd ever seen.  
  
He already felt as rough as he ever had from a gunshot wound, and even though the bleeding had slowed, it was still oozing. He knew that as the night went on, he was only going to feel worse. He'd conserved enough water from the canteen that he shouldn't have had to worry about dehydrating, but if the fever kept rising, he knew that it wouldn't really matter. He could console himself with the fact that he hadn't thrown up yet, but he figured that was just a matter of time.  
  
The sun had long-since set, and he hadn't heard any sounds that made him think the posse had found his location before it got dark. The vampires would have no problem tracking at night, but if they were keeping their true forms a secret from the rest of the town, then they'd probably bedded down for the night. He envied them the campfire, blankets and coffee that he was sure they had, because the temperature was dropping rapidly and his coat wasn't enough to keep the chill out.  
  
But there was no point in thinking, because there was nothing he could do about any of it. So he leaned back against the rocks again, closed his eyes, and let himself drift off to sleep.  
  


* * *

  
"Thirteen. You have to make thirteen bullets."  
  
Colt looked up at him in confusion. "Why in heaven's name would I make thirteen bullets?"  
  
Sam shrugged and leaned his hands against the table. "I don't know. But you did. So, that means you have to, right?"  
  
Colt smiled. "You see, my boy? You're becoming an expert at time travel already."  
  
"I don't want to be an expert," Sam insisted. "I just want to get my brother back and go home."  
  
"And so you shall." Colt glanced up from his work just long enough to see the look of single-minded determination on Sam's face. "Tell me, Sam Winchester. The legend about this gun, you say that I made it for a hunter?"  
  
Sam nodded briskly.  
  
"Did you ever know his name?"  
  
"No," Sam said. "A hunter on horseback is all my dad said."  
  
Colt nodded slowly. "Then you understand that this means you'll never be able to tell anyone exactly who I made the gun for. Not even your brother."  
  
"Why not?" Sam asked.  
  
"Well, first, there is the small matter of Samuel Colt making a gun for a Winchester. If word of that got out, neither you nor I would ever live it down." Sam had to smile at that. "Secondly, I have to believe that there is a reason no one ever knew that hunter's name. And if you tell anyone the truth..."  
  
"I'll change something," Sam said with a nod. "I understand."  
  
He looked down at his watch quickly. It was already six in the morning. Colt had been working on the gun all night, which meant that Dean had been alone all night.   
  
"Will it take much longer?" he asked. "I don't want to rush you, but Dean... it was so cold last night..."  
  
"Oh, don't you worry," Colt said distractedly. "You said he was gutshot? A man with a wound like that can linger for days before..." Sam didn't know what Colt saw on his face when he looked at him, but he knew it wasn't good. It was definitely enough to make him reconsider his words and turn away again. "Oh. Oh, dear. Yes, well... your brother is alive, Winchester. I can promise you that. Now, as for how much longer I will be..."  
  
Colt stood up from the table with the gun in his hands. Sam reached for it, and Colt surrendered it to him without a word. He held his other hand out, and Colt placed thirteen shiny, new silver bullets, marked with the numbers one through thirteen, in his palm.  
  
Colt picked his coat up from the back of his chair and walked to the door.  
  
"Let's go find that brother of yours, shall we?"  
  


* * *

  
Someone was coming.  
  
He'd hurt too much to change position during the night, he hadn't been able to shake the bone-deep chill of spending the night outside in October, and he'd long-since lost the feeling in his legs. He was a sitting duck where he was, and he knew it, but there was nothing he could do to improve his situation. He reached for his Colt; he had no plans to kill the humans that were looking for him, and he knew that the iron wouldn't do much more than piss the vampires off, but he had no plans to just sit there and let them take him.  
  
He intended to make a stand, even if it turned out to be his last.   
  
His hands, though, had other ideas, and his fingers refused to open the snap on his holster. He managed to wrap them around the handle of the machete tightly enough to hold it, but his arms were too weak to lift it. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the rock, and sighed.  
  
"Pancho?"  
  
He opened his eyes slowly, and it took him several seconds to clear them enough to recognize Jim Edwards standing in front of him.  
  
"Damn, Pancho. You look like hell."  
  
Jim stepped over his legs and knelt down beside him, pulled the bloody bandana away from the wound and looked at it, then winced in sympathy.  
  
"Nasty gutshot ya got there."  
  
"Jim," Dean finally managed to whisper. He fought to lift his right arm and batted at Jim's coat until his fingers snagged in it. "Ya gotta listen, Jim." He was gasping for every breath he took, staring at Jim's face through eyes almost too blurry to see through, and shaking so badly that his teeth clattered. "Those men. They weren't..."  
  
"Did ya kill 'em?" Jim asked.  
  
Dean nodded weakly. "But... not human," he said. "Gotta... gotta b'lieve me..."  
  
"Chopped their heads off, did ya?"  
  
Dean nodded again. "The thing... Joe's lookin'... was them..."  
  
Jim smiled at him, and for some reason he couldn't explain, it made Dean nervous. "They were the thing in the mountains, huh? One of 'em bit you?"  
  
Dean blinked in confusion. "Jim... gotta run..."  
  
Instead of running, Jim bent down and leaned closer to Dean, until he could whisper in his ear. "I know what vampires are, Pancho. And I know a hunter when I smell one."  
  
Dean tried to pull away, but only managed to turn his head in time to see the second set of teeth descend.  
  


* * *

  
Sam could see the commotion from some distance away.  
  
He couldn't see exactly what was going on, but that didn't mean he couldn't figure out who was involved. The dust that rose from the squirming mass of what he assumed was a pissed off nest of vampires, right next to the rock formation he'd left Dean hidden in, was more than enough.  
  
He started to jump down from his horse, but Colt reached out and grabbed his sleeve.  
  
"Get closer, Winchester."  
  
"They've got Dean!"  
  
"And you can't help him if they see you coming. Circle around and get above them."  
  
Sam nodded briskly as Colt pulled his horse across in front of him, and then he followed him. As they closed in on the rocks, he had to make a conscious effort to block out the sounds he was hearing.   
  
"I'll start the spell as soon as you're clear of the vampires," Colt said. He took hold of Sam's reins as they pulled up behind the rocks. "Good luck and Godspeed, son."  
  
Sam grabbed a handhold on the large rock and started to pull himself out of the saddle. He turned back to Colt quickly when a thought occurred to him.  
  
"When you send us back, will we be in the quarry? Because if we're on foot, with Dean hurt..."  
  
"I will manipulate the spell to make certain that you return to your time in the same place you left it," Colt said. "You have transportation there, don't you?"

Sam nodded his thanks quickly, pulled himself out of the saddle, and started climbing. The angry shouts and grunts of pain got louder when he crested the rock and crouched low to walk across it. He heard the sound of a fist striking flesh before he saw it, and he straightened to his full height.

 

Dean was lying face-down on the ground below him, surrounded by the same ten men that had fired on them in town. So that meant at least six vampires, two men Sam didn't know, plus Jim and Joe. Sam couldn't tell which of them had punched Dean, but Joe didn't seem to have liked it, because he was standing next to Dean with his arms spread out, holding the other men back.

  
Sam had a clear shot at several of the vampires, but he didn't want to take a chance on firing until he knew that Dean would be able to get himself out of the way. His mind scrambled to come up with a plan, because so far, it didn't look like he was even conscious.  
  
"This ain't happenin' out here, Silas. I'm takin' this boy back to Laramie."  
  
"Let us have 'im!" one of the men shouted.   
  
"We are not gonna hang him without a trial!" Joe insisted.  
  
One of the vampires stepped forward, a tall man with light hair and light eyes, dressed in much nicer clothes than the others. From the way the others moved aside for him, Sam assumed that was their leader.  
  
"We don't need your permission to do what we're gonna do, Sheriff," he said calmly. "There are more of us than there are of you."  
  
"Ain't happenin'," Joe argued. He pulled his gun carefully and held it loosely at his side. "You don't have to like what I do, but you will respect it. I am the law round here, Silas, not you."  
  
Silas chuckled and shook his head. Sam lifted the Colt and took aim on the man's forehead.  
  
"We ain't gonna hang him, Joe," Silas said. "But we're gettin' our kinda justice one way or 'nother. If you won't give it to us, then we'll take it." He took one more step forward, and Sam decided he'd seen enough.  
  
"Stop right there!"  
  
Ten heads turned up to him in unison, but the one face he wanted to see wasn't among them. Sam stared down at the men that surrounded his brother with every ounce of hatred he had in him. The only two he spared were Jim and Joe, because he knew that they had been duped by the vampires and were probably the most innocent of all the people involved.  
  
"Lefty!" Jim shouted up at him. "What you doin' up there?"  
  
"Jim, you and Joe, drag D... my brother out of there."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Just do it!" Sam ordered. "Do it now."  
  
Neither of them moved to do as they were told, but Sam breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Dean moving on the ground. He lifted his head and turned it slowly, then looked up at Sam with glassy, unfocused eyes.  
  
"Sammy..." he gasped. "Jim..."  
  
Jim moved forward quickly, grabbed Dean under the arms, and pulled him up from the ground. Sam couldn't see if Dean's eyes rolled back or not, but the way his head fell forward made it pretty clear that he'd passed out. Joe looked at Jim in confusion.  
  
"What are you doin'?"  
  
"What the man with the gun said," Jim answered. "S'not gonna hurt anything. Help me."  
  
Jim and Joe each took one of Dean's arms, and they pulled him out of the center of the circle and closer to the rocks. While they were doing that, Silas took another step forward.  
  
"You really want to stop there," Sam said.  
  
Silas smiled up at him. "Ya know that gun ain't gonna stop us, hunter. And there's more of us on the way."  
  
Sam smiled back. "This ain't no ordinary gun."  
  
Silas's grin turned feral, and his second set of teeth dropped. He jumped toward the rock Sam stood on, and almost as if on cue, the other five vampires did the same.   
  
Two of them descended on the two men who'd joined them on the posse, pulling them to the ground in a tangle of arms, legs, and teeth. Silas and another started climbing the rock, and the other two headed for Jim and Joe, who were standing in front of Dean with their guns drawn.  
  
Sam pulled the trigger and hit Silas right between the eyes.  
  
The look on his face was one of shock, and he looked up at Sam in confusion. A second later, the lightning that meant the death of something evil started flashing out from the small circle in his forehead, across his eyes, and down his neck.  
  
The other five vampires froze as he fell. But when he hit the ground, all hell broke loose.  
  
The vampires attacked whichever human happened to be the closest. Sam took careful aim and picked them off one at a time, starting with the one closest to him and working his way out. He dropped one that was running toward Jim, and another that Joe was unloading his gun into. He finished with the two that stood over the mutilated bodies of the two unfortunate men whose names Sam didn't know.  
  
He took a deep breath as he watched the last one fall, and he looked up across the horizon. There was a small dust cloud moving toward them, most likely Silas's reinforcements on the way. He shoved the Colt back in his holster, jumped down from the rock, and ran over to where Jim and Joe were tending to Dean.  
  
"What the hell, Lefty?" Joe demanded.   
  
Sam shook his head and fell to his knees at Dean's side. "The less you know, the better, Joe. But you and Jim need to clear out. There's more on the way."  
  
"Those things!" Joe continued. "Was they... they wasn't human, was they?"  
  
"Not anymore." Sam checked Dean's bullet wound quickly, then pressed his hand against his forehead. Dean needed a hospital, immediately, which meant they needed to get the hell out of there, but neither Jim nor Joe had moved, so he glanced up at them. "I'm serious, Joe. Take Jim and get the hell out of here. Now."  
  
Sam felt a light tug on his sleeve, and turned back to Dean. His eyes were half-open, and so was his mouth. He was trying to say something, but his voice was so weak that Sam couldn't hear him. And all he could see was the blood that bubbled up between his teeth and trickled out the side of his mouth.  
  
"Easy," Sam said. He smoothed Dean's hair with one hand and wiped away the offending blood with the other. "Take it easy."  
  
Dean's lips were still moving, and he was obviously intent on what he was saying, so Sam bent down to hear what was so important.  
  
"Jim."  
  
It was more a breath against his cheek than a word, but Sam understood it. His message delivered, Dean passed out again. Sam let his head hang forward, closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds, and wrapped his hand around the Colt. He'd give anything for Dean to be wrong, but when he turned to face the brothers, it was obvious that he was right.  
  
Joe was kneeling on the ground next to Sam, near Dean's feet. But Jim had pushed himself up from the ground and stood over all three of them. His teeth had already dropped.  
  
"Jim!" Sam shouted. "Don't!"  
  
Joe spun toward his little brother, shock and horror written plainly on his face. "God, Jimmy, no!"  
  
But it was too late. The animal drive for blood was too strong, and Jim couldn't fight it anymore. He launched himself toward Joe and tackled him to the ground. He spun around to come back for Sam and Dean, but Sam didn't give him the chance.  
  
"Jim." It was almost a sob that crossed Sam's lips as he pulled the trigger.  
  
Joe was back up from the ground and moving forward fast enough that he caught Jim's body before it hit the ground.  
  
"No, Jimmy, no!" Joe looked up at Sam, tears running down his face freely. "God damn you!"  
  
"I'm sorry, Joe," Sam said sincerely. "I'm so sorry. He was..."  
  
"He's my brother!"  
  
Sam glanced back across the plain frantically. The dust being stirred up by the approaching vampires was getting closer. He grabbed Joe's arm.  
  
"You have to get out of here!"  
  
"Jimmy." Joe's voice broke on the name. He stood clumsily and tried desperately to drag Jim's body toward his horse. "I gotta take him back. I gotta..."  
  
"You have to run!" Sam insisted. "There are more of them coming!"  
  
Joe stumbled in the dirt and lost his grip on Jim's body. He forced himself to stand, wiped at the tears that streamed down his face, and tried again.  
  
"Joe!"  
  
"Sorry," Joe mumbled to Jim's body as it fell a second time. "God, Jimmy. I'm sorry. I'll be back for you." He pushed himself to his feet once more and dashed for his horse, jumped into the saddle and took off toward Laramie at a full gallop.  
  
Sam closed his eyes and lowered his head. He knew that Joe wasn't going to make it back to Laramie in time. This was when he was going to turn – he'd put money on it.  
  
But there was no more time to worry about Joe's fate, because the wind had picked up around him. True to his word, Colt had already started his spell. He lifted Dean's shoulders up from the ground, wrapped his arms around him, and pulled him close.  
  
"Winchester!"  
  
Sam turned his head toward the voice that called his name, and was unsurprised to see Samuel Colt standing behind him. He was taken aback, though, when he held his hand out to him.  
  
"Give me the gun."  
  
Sam shook his head vigorously. "No!" he said. "We need it. You don't understand. There's a demon, we can use this to..."  
  
Colt stepped forward and put his hand on Sam's shoulder. "Yes, you could. But your brother will not be with you when you get there."  
  
"What? Why?"  
  
"If you take the gun with you, your father will be alive, but he will be possessed by the yellow-eyed demon. And Dean will have died on the floor of a cabin in Missouri, where he was tortured to death by that demon."  
  
Sam looked down at Dean in his arms, pale and sweaty and dying, pulled him closer, and closed his eyes.  
  
"Leave it with me," Colt said. "So I can leave it in my cabin for Daniel Elkins to find. So your father can take it back from the vampires. So you can have it when you need it to save them both."  
  
Sam took a deep breath and nodded slowly. He shifted all of Dean's weight to his left arm, then reached for his holster with his right hand. He pulled the Colt out and handed it to Samuel.  
  
"I fired seven," he said softly as he adjusted his hold on Dean. "But there are only five left when we find it."  
  
"I am sure that someone, somewhere, will find a need to fire it one more time in the coming years," Colt said.  
  
Colt stepped back, and Sam could hear the wind starting to rush around his ears. He glanced up at the warlock one last time.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
Colt nodded, and the wind grew louder.  
  
Sam could see the ripple forming in the air in front of them, and he held Dean as tightly to his chest as he could.   
  
"Don't worry, Sam," he heard Colt shout over the roar of the wind. "Everything that happened here was meant to be. Your future isn't changed; it's safe."  
  
Sam bent down across Dean, sheltering his face from the rocks and dust that the wind whipped up and swirled around them. He closed his eyes and buried his face in Dean's hair.  
  
"I gotcha, Dean," he whispered. "I'm taking you home. And I'm not letting go."  
  
When the vortex slammed into them, Sam didn't let go.  
  


* * *

  
When Sam opened his eyes and saw the ceiling of the warehouse above him, the first thing he thought to do was let out an enormous sigh of relief.   
  
His second thought was that he shouldn't have been staring up at all. He should have been laying across Dean, because they would have landed in 2007 in the same position they'd been in when they left 1882. But Dean wasn't in his arms anymore, and that wasn't right. He sat up quickly and saw Dean lying on the floor next to him. But they weren't alone.  
  
"Joe," he breathed.  
  
Josiah Edwards was sitting cross-legged on the floor at Dean's side, just looking down at him. Sam knew they'd both been unconscious when they arrived, and they would have been totally defenseless for several minutes at least. But he hadn't hurt them.  
  
Why not?  
  
Sam pulled his legs up and started to stand. Joe pulled out a knife – Dean's silver knife, Sam noticed, the one they'd traded to Jim for their clothes – and pressed it lightly against Dean's neck, and he froze in place.  
  
"Sit down, Lefty," Joe said.  
  
Sam did as he was told, but he didn't relax. Every nerve was on edge, every muscle primed to react if Joe made one move to actually hurt Dean.  
  
"Joe, please."  
  
"Who are you?" Joe's voice was devoid of all emotion, his whole demeanor a stark contrast to the rage he'd attacked Dean with – what would have been to Joe – only moments before.   
  
"I don't..."  
  
"It's a great song and all, but after a hundred and twenty-five years, I think I deserve to know who you really are."  
  
"Winchester," Sam said. He brought his hand to rest against the handle of the machete under his coat, ready to draw it if he needed to. "Sam Winchester. And my brother, Dean."  
  
Joe didn't move or speak, and Sam couldn't help but notice how eerie the silence was. The floor of the warehouse was still littered with the headless bodies and disembodied heads of the vampires he and Dean had killed there, but Joe didn't seem to notice them at all. He just sat, staring down at Dean while holding the knife against his throat, but he didn't seem eager to kill him anymore.  
  
"I recognized you," Joe finally said. "Soon as you walked in here, I knew it was you. Tried to stay out of it, stay away from it, but the damn... the bloodlust is too powerful. I can't stop it." Joe almost smiled, but to Sam, he just looked sad. It was not an emotion that Sam had often seen on any vampire, and definitely not one that he'd expected to see on that one. "More than a century I been tryin' to find you. This ain't exactly how I wanted it to go."  
  
Joe was still looking down at Dean, and the knife hadn't moved, but his face had softened considerably. Sam thought he looked regretful, almost wistful, but he didn't have time to worry about that. He had to get Dean out of there.  
  
"I helped you save him."  
  
Sam swallowed hard and nodded his head. "Yes, you did."  
  
"I helped you save yer brother," Joe's voice was hardening, and Sam's grip on his machete handle tightened. "And you repaid me by killin' mine and lettin' 'em drag me off and turn me into a monster!"  
  
They moved almost in unison. Joe leaned forward with the knife, pressing it deeper into the skin on Dean's throat, while Sam leaped to his feet, pulled his machete, and held it against Joe's neck.  
  
"Get away from him," Sam commanded.  
  
Joe didn't move, and for a second looked like he was considering pressing harder.  
  
"Damn it, Joe, don't make me do this," Sam said.   
  
"I know it's not really yer fault. I'm the one couldn't save him," Joe said sadly. "I was supposed to. My baby brother was a vampire, and I didn't even know. For months, at least. Maybe years." Joe looked up with at Sam, bloodshot eyes full of pain. "How d'ya not notice yer own brother's turned into a monster?"  
  
"I don't want to kill you."   
  
"Ya did five minutes ago!" Joe argued, but he still didn't move away from Dean.  
  
"Five minutes ago, I didn't know you. Now I do." Sam surprised himself by admitting it, but once he had, there was no taking it back. And it was true. The urge to kill the vampire was strong, but the desire to not kill the man that Josiah Edwards had been was stronger. "Five minutes ago, I hadn't talked to you, or had a beer with you. Five minutes ago, you hadn't risked your life to save my brother. Now you have."  
  
Joe looked up at him, and Sam could see the telltale streaks of red around his eyes, the extra row of teeth that had descended over his normal ones, and he couldn't deny what was sitting right in front of him. Joe was a vampire, had been one for a hundred and twenty-five years. Could who Joe Edwards had once been really make a difference in what he had become?  
  
"It was his blood they used," Joe said. "When they turned me. Wasn't even five minutes after you was gone, they caught up to me. Held me down on the ground and made me drink my own brother's blood."  
  
"I'm sorry." And he was, sincerely.  
  
"The first thing I did when I woke up was kill them. All of 'em. With my bare hands. Ripped their heads clean off. But it wasn't enough. Because Jimmy was still dead, and I shoulda been but wasn't. But do ya know what the worst part was?"  
  
Sam shook his head slowly.  
  
"Realizin' I can't die when there's nothin' else in the world I wanna do."  
  
This was the Josiah Edwards that Sam knew. This was Joe, who loved his little brother, followed him wherever he went, and gave everything to protect him. He understood why Dean had wanted so badly to warn Joe about what was coming for him, and why Dean had taken such a quick liking to him.   
  
"Please, Joe, just... put the knife down, okay? Move away from him."  
  
Joe shook his head slowly and looked back down at Dean. "If I cut him, you'll take my head off, right?"  
  
"Yes," Sam answered truthfully. "I will."  
  
"Do I have to cut him? Or will ya do it just on me askin'? Cause I really like Pan... Dean, here. Done saved his life once. Seems kinda foolish to go hurtin' him any worse'n I already have." Joe tilted his head and looked at the blood on Dean's shirt. "I'm guessin' that's my bullet in him, ain't it?"  
  
Sam nodded slowly.   
  
"Well, then, get to choppin' already!" Joe said. He laid the knife down on the ground next to Dean's leg, and Sam breathed a sigh of relief. "All the killin' and the... eatin'. Drinkin' innocent people. Hated myself every damn time, but I couldn't stop. Been livin' like this for a hundred twenty-five years, waitin' for the day somebody'd fix it. I'd'a done it myself, but ya know how hard it is to cut yer own head off?"  
  
"No," Sam said softly.  
  
"Well, it ain't that easy, let me tell ya."  
  
"No, Joe, I mean... no." Sam pulled the machete away from Joe's neck and let it hang loosely at his side.  
  
Joe looked back up at him, red-rimmed eyes wide in confusion. "Ya want me to cut 'im?"  
  
"No," Sam said again quickly, shaking his head. "Don't hurt him. But I'm not going to kill you."  
  
"Why not?" Joe demanded as he pushed himself to his feet. "S'what you do, ain't it? Yer a hunter, right? You kill the monsters? Well, here I am! Kill me!"  
  
"No." His voice was growing stronger every time he said it.   
  
"I shouldn't'a outlived him!"  
  
"I'm not going to do it."  
  
"Damn you!" Joe reached for the silver knife again.  
  
"Help me, Joe."  
  
"Help you what?" His hand stopped before it reached the knife, and he looked up at Sam in suspicion.  
  
"Help me get Dean out of here and to a hospital."  
  
"An' why'd I wanna do that?"  
  
"Because you like him," Sam said with a small smile. "Because you couldn't save your brother, but you can help me save mine. Because you're not a monster, you're a good man. And because I know someone who can help you."


	4. Epilogue

It was the fourth time Dean had woken up since Sam and Joe had carried him through the doors of the emergency room at Ivinson Memorial Hospital three days earlier. It was the fourth time he'd opened his eyes and looked around for vampires before he looked for Sam. It was the fourth time he'd tried to push himself up from the bed, pulled at the stitches in his side, and ended up hurting himself.  
  
Sam didn't think Dean remembered the first three.  
  
"Hey," Sam said softly. He stepped closer to the bed and wrapped his hand around Dean's arm to calm him. "It's okay. They're gone."  
  
Dean turned his head and looked up at him, his eyes glassy from both pain and pain relievers.  
  
"You're in the hospital. You got shot, remember?"  
  
Dean nodded slowly, but still looked uncertain.  
  
"Hunting accident in the mountains. With an antique Winchester rifle."  
  
The side of Dean's mouth curled in a tired smile. "S'ironic."  
  
That had been one of Sam's first thoughts, after the surgeon – who was apparently a gun buff – told him what kind of bullet he'd pulled out of Dean's abdomen. It hadn't been the first question; that had been, "Is my brother alive?". It hadn't been the second or the third, either. Those were, "Is my brother going to be all right?" and "When can I see him?". He was willing to admit that it maybe hadn't even been in the top ten, but it had been up there. Somewhere.  
  
Dean's weak and raspy voice pulled Sam's full attention back to him. "Gotta get movin'."  
  
Sam shook his head and wrapped his hands around the rail of the bed. "Not until you're ready, no. We're good here."  
  
Dean looked even more confused, so Sam explained.  
  
"Did you know Bobby grew up in Laramie?" Dean shook his head. "Yeah, neither did I. But apparently, he did. And he's still got friends here. One of those friends is an ER doctor." Dean's tired smile returned. "Another is the sheriff, who goes hunting with Bobby sometimes. So you take your time."  
  
"Sheriff?" Dean's eyes widened, and Sam knew what he was worried about.  
  
"Joe was here when we got back," Sam said softly. "He was waiting for us to wake up."  
  
"Didn' hurt you?" Exhaustion, pain, and drugs made Dean's words slur together, but Sam didn't care. At that moment, he thought Dean's voice was the most fantastic sound he'd ever heard.  
  
"No, he didn't hurt me. Or you. He just wanted to know our names."  
  
"D'ja kill him?" Dean asked sadly.  
  
Sam smiled when he shook his head that time. "I didn't have to," he said. "He helped me bring you here, and I found him somewhere to live."  
  
"S'vamp..."  
  
"Lenore," Sam interrupted. "She came and got him two days ago. He's going to live with them, work on getting his bloodlust under control. Lenore thinks he's strong enough to do it."   
  
Dean looked surprised at that, and Sam shrugged.  
  
"You were right about him, Dean. Joe Edwards was a damn good man. And it turns out he still is one." He reached into the pocket of the coat that hung across the back of the chair – still the one he'd bought in Laramie, even though he'd changed back into his own clothes days ago – and pulled out the silver knife. "He kept this all these years, because he wanted to give it back to you." He held it up for Dean to see before he slipped it under the pillow. "Thought you might want it."  
  
Dean grinned briefly before he shifted in the bed and tried to sit up, but he fell back into his pillow with a gasp. Sam pressed his hand against his chest to keep him from trying again.  
  
"Will you stop?" he said. "You rip those stitches out, you're gonna be in a world of hurt."  
  
"M'okay."  
  
Sam shook his head vigorously. "No, Dean. You're really not. Do you even know how close you came to... ?"   
  
He couldn't finish asking the question, because he knew the answer. Knew that Dean's heart had stopped more than once on the operating table. Knew how close he'd come to losing his brother forever.  
  
"S'okay, Sammy," Dean said. When Sam didn't answer him, he continued. "Y'okay? Y'hurt?"  
  
Sam huffed in disbelief and annoyance. One time, just one time, he wanted Dean to focus on his own needs and let Sam take care of himself. Without arguing about it.  
  
"I'm fine," he answered. "You're the one that's hurt."  
  
Dean's eyes started to drift closed, and Sam could tell that he forced them back open.  
  
"Wizard real?"  
  
"Yeah, he was." Sam couldn't help but smile fondly as he thought back on his acquaintance with Samuel Colt. There was so much that he wanted to tell Dean, but he knew that he couldn't. Things had obviously worked out the way they were meant to, just like Colt had said they would. Sam had no intention of messing things up.  
  
"Turned out that us being there was an accident, but he sent us home."  
  
"How'd we get out?"  
  
"Joe helped me keep the vamps away from you. That's when he..." Sam swallowed hard. No matter that he knew it had to happen, he didn't think he'd ever forget that Joe had been turned while protecting them. And from the look on his face, Dean would never forgive himself for it, either.  
  
"Anyway, he held them off long enough for the wizard to work his spell." It was true, even if it wasn't the full story. As much as he wanted to tell him, Sam knew that Dean probably wouldn't want to hear the truth about why and how the Colt had been made. But that gun had been created for the sole purpose of saving Dean's life, it had done it twice more since then, and Sam had a feeling that it would do it again.  
  
For that alone, he would be forever grateful to Samuel Colt.  
  
Dean was trying to sit up again, and Sam stopped him by putting his hand back on his arm.   
  
"Stop, Dean. Go to sleep. We can talk when you're stronger. I'm not going anywhere."  
  
Dean nodded slowly, stopped fighting the exhaustion and the effects of the drugs, and let his eyes fall closed. It was only a matter of seconds before he was asleep.   
  
Sam sighed as he sat back down in his chair to watch over Dean, and he found himself left alone with his thoughts again. One thought haunted him more than any other, and it was the one he kept returning to.   
  
If he and Dean ever found themselves in the same position as Jim and Joe Edwards, how would they react? If he became the monster that they both feared he would some day, would he hide it from Dean so they could stay together, like Jim had done? Would he try to bring Dean down with him, or would he be able to let him go? Or if something happened, if Sam ended up dead and Dean was left behind, would he lose his will to live, like Joe had? Would he blame himself for it, let something in the dark take him, or would he do his damndest to end it himself?  
  
If they ever lost each other, would either one of them be able to go on alone?  
  
Sam didn't know the answer to that question, and he could only hope that they never found out.


End file.
